The present invention relates to clinical laboratory systems connecting computers and analyzers through a network for managing examination information relating to clinical examinations. The present invention provides clinical laboratory systems for use particularly in medical treatment facilities, such as in hospitals and the like, for facilitating the managed progress of various types of clinical laboratory work.
In medical treatment facilities such as hospitals and the like, clinical laboratory systems have become widely used for the general management of various types of clinical examination work. Such clinical laboratory systems are constructed by installing analyzers and computers (clients) as input/output terminal devices at various locations in the hospital, and connecting these with a management device such as a computer (server) over a network. Clinical examination work includes examination scheduling and reception, printing barcode labels to adhere to specimen containers, such as blood vials and the like, printing worksheets for examination sequence guidelines, transporting specimens to the laboratory, assaying specimens used in various types of analyzers, tabulating assay results, validation (validation of assay results), re-examination instruction, information on examination results, and the like.
In clinical laboratory work, examination and treatment of the patient may be hindered if examination results are not reported within a fixed time. This kind of problem may arise from various factors including: a specimen collected from a patient not arriving at the laboratory provided with the analyzer within a scheduled time for various reasons; examinations in the laboratory may be fully scheduled; and the transmission of the post-assay report may be incomplete. If problems with a specific specimen are not attended to in a timely manner, not only is the handling of that particular specimen impaired, but the smooth flow of the chain of laboratory work is also hindered. Clinical laboratory systems provided with a progress management function for discovering such problems are known. Such clinical laboratory systems are provided with a function for displaying a list of the progress of each examination which is a management object of the clinical laboratory system. Operators of the clinical laboratory system look for problems in the progress of examinations on a list display, and implement solutions to eliminate any problems found.
In conventional clinical laboratory systems, however, the number of examinations to be monitored in the progress flow increases in conjunction with increases in the number of specimens and types of examinations which are managed by the clinical laboratory system. There are times when there are no problems or few problems in the examinations listed on the display. In other instances, even if there is a problem, the problem examination may be outside the scope of examinations for which the operator is authorized. Consequently, it may be difficult to quickly discover problems with the progress of examinations within the management scope of the operator when many examinations are listed on a display, and this situation prevents rapid resolution of such examination problems.